First, the obligatory SMELLS BAD reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvpTzitlSos
Now, about the snoring. Antihistamines are supposed to "dry up" the sinuses. I hate them. They give me a massive headache and they turn the inside of my skull into an overbaked ceramic pot lined with hardened clay that's all brittle and crumbly. Oh, and did I mention the headache?
Then one time when I had a bad cold, I tried a Mucinex to clear up a chest rattle. Which it did. I was surprised to discover that it also worked on the rest of me like an super-anti-antihistamine, turning a fire hose on the inside of my skull to rinse it out all clean and shiny. No headache. And, as a surprise bonus, no snoring.
So I'm not saying that what worked for me will will work for you, YMMV etc. But with your Allergy Tree blessing you with a big dose of yuck, you might want to give it a shot, just to see if it helps.

There is a tree near my house, that has probably been there for years, just doing its tree thing, watching patiently as families come and go, empires rise and fall, and Isengard is flooded. I'm sure it's a beautiful tree, cheerfully trading carbon dioxide for oxygen, providing shade, and most li...

This is one of the scariest things I've ever done: I'm releasing a short collection of short fiction, called The Day After and Other Stories. Last year, I collected a few short stories I'd written and sold them as a chapbook at PAX. It was a scary thing for me to do, because while I feel confide...

Yesterday, I said: I found nine hardback copies of The Happiest Days of Our Lives that I must have put there when they first arrived at my house a couple of years ago. They look as perfect as they did the day they were taken out of the box. So I have this idea to sell them, that goes like this:...

A long time ago, on an Internet far, far away, John Scalzi's brain unleashed the most epic and awesome and WTF image ever known in the history of all the tribes: The Unicorn Pegasus Kitten. But a Unicorn Pegasus Kitten alone wasn't enough, and so I was placed astride it, wearing the Infamous Clo...

I do little mini-physics demos for my gradeschool kids' classes, and my favorite TBBT episode openings are the ones in which Penny walks in on the gang doing something incredibly goofy (which may or may not be related to the rest of the episode) like driving battlebots or sending signals around the earth to turn on their lights or making oobleck dance on stereo speakers. Please keep doing these! Vibration resonance, crazy magnetism, superconductivity, liquid nitrogen, go nuts!
My question: Does any of the gang own a slide rule?
Nowadays when the latest digital gizmo is always lusted for, it's hard to remember that slipsticks were once a badge of high-tech braininess. I could easily see one of the gang bringing out a particular model to show off, only to start a one-upmanship thread that would run through an entire episode. Maybe Raj receives his father's cheap Indian plastic Deeva Polytek in the mail. Leonard would tease that even his Post Versalog has more scales. Howard would brag that his Faber-Castell 2/83N is bigger. Sheldon would produce a Pickett N600-T that actually went to the moon in the pocket of an Apollo astronaut. And so on.
Of course, at the end of the episode we would find out that the slide rule Penny picked up with a box of other junk at a Nebraska yardsale years ago is really a priceless collectors-item museum-quality mint-in-box-with-manual K&E Analon (only 600 were ever made). Or maybe everything in the box would be rare/valuable old math/engineer gear, like never-opened packages with an Otis King, a low-serial-number Curta and an original Paragon planimeter. Maybe she could pay her rent for the year by eBaying the works. To the great dismay of Leonard/Sheldon/Howard/Raj who couldn't afford the auctions.
Just a thought. Have a great panel! Wish I could be there.

This Friday, I'm moderating the Big Bang Theory panel at Comic-con. The entire cast will be in attendance, as well as series creators Bill Prady and Chuck Lorre. We only have an hour, which always goes by faster than we think, so I'm going to start out with a handful of my own questions before I...

"... and a slide rule in every pocket"? A sentiment I heartily endorse, although I suspect that very few people these days would be willing to spring for a classic rule.
Quality pocket-sized rules such as the Post Versalog, Keuffel&Esser DeciLon or (sigh) Faber-Castell Novo Duplex (examples can be seen here http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/pocket.html ) are gorgeous examples of precision craftmanship, but being long out of production has really driven their prices up. Brand-new Pickett N600-ES pocket rules (the slide rules that went on Apollo missions to the moon!) are still surprising available in the box (examples here http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/nib-pickett.html ) and somewhat less expensive but still too pricey for most people.
Might I suggest the Concise 28N? The little round plastic circles fit very nicely in any pants or shirt pocket. And, still being manufactured today, they can be ordered individually or in any quantity on the internet (here http://www.concise.co.jp/eng0731/top_eng.html ) and shipped directly to your door for about ten bucks apiece. Impress your friends!

Sunday night, I took my entire family and a bunch of our friends to see Jonathan Coulton with Paul and Storm at Largo. A special evening (it was the first time Anne and the kids saw them perform live) was made extra-special for me because I got to open the whole show. Earlier this year, Paul an...

Scraping out the brain again, here's what I found: I scored 100% on the Atari Quiz at mental_floss. Go me. Some company called Schmap wants to use one of my pictures from Montreal in one of their travel guides. They say that they don't pay for the pictures, because they give the guides away. How...

Scraping out the brain again, here's what I found: I scored 100% on the Atari Quiz at mental_floss. Go me. Some company called Schmap wants to use one of my pictures from Montreal in one of their travel guides. They say that they don't pay for the pictures, because they give the guides away. How...